Optimising a managed print service solution offers substantial cost savings. By effectively re-routing and managing the amount of paper and printing processed in your office.

One of the many frustrating challenges for organisations these days is obtaining a reduction in the volume of print and paper processed across a company.

The management of paper, print and print devices is a tangible cost, but because it is often overlooked, it is not perceived as a true cost reflected on the bottom line.

Simply recycling paper, implementing a duplex print strategy (printing both sides) or using recycled paper as part of a company’s drive to go green won’t save a company money in the long term.

Dispensing with mountains of paper often secure or confidential information requires the services of a secure disposal company but that all adds to the costs of managing your paper-flow.

Many companies delude themselves in to thinking that the office doesn’t print more than is necessary instead they stock pile paper, re-print see an error and re-print again without any consideration for the environment or the cost implications to the company.

Only when an organisation starts to analyse when, where and how often paper is being used and what the re-ordering frequency is do the costs of printing become visible?

Companies are over burdened with many print devices – desk top printers, scanners, photocopiers with employees overly protective of their desktop printers.

Cost reductions are achievable with a reduction of 3:1 by implementing modern MPS (managed print services) and MFPD’s (multi functional print devices) factor in the sizeable reduction in consumables used across an organisation and the reduction in cost becomes apparent.

With a highly mobile work force employees want to be able to print anytime and anywhere. There is the concern of secure printed information being visible to prying eyes and the management of how and when printed documents are managed in the paper-flow.

Secure print tracking software eliminates confidential information being left on the printer.

How do you prevent wasted paper?

How do you keep printer consumable costs down?

What happens to unclaimed documents?

How am I going to print off secure documents without my desktop printer?

Removing the need to rely on a single printer, users are able to divert their print jobs to the most cost efficient printer and not have to worry about a device being out of service or having to wait for I.T. to resolve the problem.

Using secure print technology with user authentication further increases what gets printed where, when and by whom as the print job can only be released once the user authenticates the print job at the device.

Intelligent print rules and routing software removes the burden of the user to decide which printer is best for each job because when the user hits “print” a window pops into view advising the user which printer and what the cost is for the printing of his/her job.

Implementing an MPS solution will save you time and money in the long term. In the short term, here are some easy to implement solutions that can be put in to practice immediately in addition to utilising a managed print services solution:

Duplex (double-sided) printing get more out of each of the pages you print, print the odd pages first by setting your printer and then print the even pages thus reducing the number of sheets you use; particularly useful for when you want to print notes.

Print in a smaller font/typeface – as long as you can still read it you will fit more content onto the sheet.

Check before you print – using the print preview button ensures you can see what you are going to print and change the margins or scaling in the document if you end up with a page with only two lines of text.

Print only the pages you need – using the print preview button allows you to print the pages you want to print and in the print dialog box you can enter the page ranges required.

You can also adjust your page settings by simply reducing the header and footer and left/right margins enabling you to fit more content onto the page; which will equate to fewer pages printed.

Print multiple pages onto a single sheet of paper using font size 12 which tends to be the default for many people the document is still legible.

Finally, you can significantly reduce your print costs by working with a print management specialist who will evaluate your print requirements and will discuss with you solutions and the implementation of a relevant managed print services solution.

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Digital Print Management Ltd

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